macOS and Mac Software: We still exist!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > macOS and Mac Software: We still exist!

dexter6: Sep 22, 2003

I see a lot of people talking about QuickTime, Perian, Flip4Mac, Mplayer, etc but haven't seen much mention of VLC.

Am I the only one who uses VLC to play anything on any OS?

# ¿ Jul 22, 2011 11:32

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 09:59

dexter6: Sep 22, 2003

I want to get a website up for my wife's pastry business and was wondering if I had any other WYSIWYG HTML editors options other than iWeb.

Anybody have any recommendations? Free is preferred, but I'm open to anything.

Thanks!

# ¿ Jul 22, 2011 21:13

dexter6: Sep 22, 2003

10-8 posted:

It's basically Mail.app except it actually works with Gmail.

Why do people keep saying this? Mail.app works perfectly for with Gmail. Or maybe I'm missing something?

# ¿ Jul 29, 2011 13:50

dexter6: Sep 22, 2003

Has anybody had any weird trash problems after upgrading to Lion?

Trash seems to take forever to empty, and sometimes it just seems to hang and never empty some files. Now even moving files to trash takes some time.

Thoughts?

# ¿ Jul 30, 2011 17:48

dexter6: Sep 22, 2003

Doctor Zero posted:

Do you have safe delete turned on? Mine was taking forever until I turned it off. I suppose I could turn it back on but, meh. Whole disk encryption is good enough for a personal machine.

Alright that helped, but I have one video file that is still there that trash says it can't empty because it is still in use. I don't have VLC open anymore...?

# ¿ Jul 30, 2011 18:25

dexter6: Sep 22, 2003

I work in an office where there is no Wifi (I know...) so when I disconnect from ethernet, iChat disconnects, too. Unfortunately, when I plug back in, it doesn't put me back online. I have installed "Chax" but it's auto-reconnect feature does not seem to be working.

Any other work arounds I could try?

Thanks!

# ¿ Aug 3, 2011 19:30

dexter6: Sep 22, 2003

passionate dongs posted:

Are you running Parallels or some other VM?

I'm not running any VMs and have the same problem.

# ¿ Aug 4, 2011 03:24

dexter6: Sep 22, 2003

I'm looking for Goon recommendations on off-site back ups. I use Dropbox for cloud storage and Time Machine / Time Capsule for backups, but obviously I'm screwed if my poo poo gets robbed or flooded.

I've been researching and things like Mozy / Crash Plan get pretty good reviews but I wanted to hear what you guys had to say.

FWIW, I've got about 1.3TB of disk space with about 750GB used that I'd like backed up.

Thanks in advance!

# ¿ Aug 15, 2011 12:46

dexter6: Sep 22, 2003

wolffenstein posted:

Absolutely love CrashPlan. It's secure, reliable, and easy. I used their seed service, which was really easy. They ship you a drive and a paid return label, you back up to the drive, ship it back, and a week later your online backups are incremental from the seed.

I read about the hard drive seed service, but I didn't realize they provided the harddrive and shipping. That's pretty freakin' cool.

# ¿ Aug 15, 2011 13:12

dexter6: Sep 22, 2003

geera posted:

I have a weird Time Machine issue I'm hoping someone can help me with.

I bought a mini a few months ago and used TM to bring over everything from my older mini (which was running 1.5). Everything seemed to copy over fine, except now when TM runs every hour, it always backs up a ton of data - around 30 GB every time. It's never less, sometimes a little more. Backing up 30 GB every hour sucks and takes forever, and noticeably impacts the performance of my computer while the backup is running (to a USB hard drive).

Does anybody know if this is a known side-effect after restoring from TM? Is there a TM log file somewhere that I can read to see what it's backing up every time?

After upgrading to Lion, my backups has been huge every time. I've used some programs to analyze what is getting backed up every time and it always shows no changes. I think this is a bug and a couple other people have asked about it in this thread. Unfortunately, I haven't seen an explanation or a fix.

# ¿ Aug 15, 2011 13:29

dexter6: Sep 22, 2003

Rubiks Pubes posted:

Well, if I can't useTime Machine over wifi anymore, can I create a partition on the external I use for iTunes music and use that for my TM volume?

Why can't you use Time Machine over wifi?

At any rate, yes you can do this as well. Google around a bit, but I did that a while ago. Key is to make sure you've got it partitioned in the correct format.

# ¿ Aug 15, 2011 14:22

dexter6: Sep 22, 2003

All this encryption talk has got me thinking....

My current process is to back up my Lion iMac and all external drives to both Time Machine and CrashPlan. As far as I can tell, my CrashPlan data is encrypted, but my iMac and Time Machine are not. I'm pretty sure I can use FileVault to do this.

Am I correct?
Are there certain steps I should follow?
Will everything continue to function as is? I want to make sure I retain my incremental backups, every hour, etc.

Thanks for the help!

# ¿ Aug 30, 2011 14:58

dexter6: Sep 22, 2003

I used to plug my iPhone in and import photos to iPhoto pretty regularly. With iOS 5, I'm never going to plug my phone into my iMac again, but now I'm realizing I have now way of importing stuff to iPhoto.

Any suggestions for me?
Will the iPhoto update help me at all?

# ¿ Oct 12, 2011 23:31

dexter6: Sep 22, 2003

wolffenstein posted:

Not sure what features you need in Entourage that Mail lacks. Hell I used Mail with an Exchange server in an enterprise environment and never felt like I missed anything.

Regardless, Entourage is old poo poo that MS isn't likely to update anymore. Not to mention you're going to cry like a bitch when its database shits itself. You really ought to upgrade to Office for Mac 2011 as soon as possible and use Outlook for Mac. While Outlook for Mac still uses a database, you won't lose your data if it destroys itself, because Outlook stores messages as individual Time Machine-able files rather than a single-file DB.

I'm not the guy that asked but I'm stuck using Entourage at work too.

1. Can't upgrade to Lion (so new Mail.app won't work)
2. Can't upgrade to Outlook 2011 because our Exchange server is 2003 and apparently Ex2003 doesn't talk to Out2011.

Anyone have any other suggestions for me?

# ¿ Oct 20, 2011 22:56

dexter6: Sep 22, 2003

IUG posted:

So I guess I need:
A new router.
One that has an USB port.
That can read Mac disks.
And can act as a Time Machine network hub.

Is this possible? If so, are there any recommendations?

Maybe I'm missing the obvious here, but an Apple Time Capsule meets all your requirements.

# ¿ Oct 25, 2011 05:10

dexter6: Sep 22, 2003

I was debating putting this in the hardware thread but I think it's more software related so.....

For the last year, I had an USB hard drive plugged directly into my iMac. This drive houses all of my torrent and media and showed up as a drive on the desktop called "Backup" (orange disk icon). Now that I've got my Time Capsule up and running, I decided I wanted to plug the drive into the TC so that it could live out of sight in my closest.

I've got everything plugged in, I'm able to browse to the drive (Finder -> dexter6's Time Capsule -> Backup) fine, however the drive does not show up "mounted" and on the desktop. As a result, uTorrent can find any of my files.

Is there any way to get it to act as it did before, or should I re-set everything in uTorrent and point all of the settings at the new path?

Thanks!

# ¿ Oct 31, 2011 03:46

dexter6: Sep 22, 2003

beefnoodle posted:

Have you tried adding the drive to your login items? Drag it into the window to auto-mount it.

Sorry, forgot to mention that I have tried that. I get a finder window opened for the drive upon login, but no disk on the desktop and paths for torrents aren't resolving still.

# ¿ Oct 31, 2011 05:12

dexter6: Sep 22, 2003

chimz posted:

Check your finder preferences, there is a different checkbox for 'show external disks on the desktop' and 'show server mounts on the desktop'.

The drive should mount in the same location in UNIXland (i.e. /Volumes/Disk) as it did when you had USB if it is still named the same. Go to your /Volumes directory (using go to folder in the Finder Go menu) and see if your drive is there. If it's got a 1 on the end rebooting is the simplest way to fix that.

You should see where utorrent thinks the files are, and find the actual path the files are at, and see what's different about them. Not exactly sure how to get a pathname out of utorrent though.

It shows up in volumes with the same name. Turns out I just had to restart torrents to make them refresh.

However, my wife sees a folder icon with a red badge (not a disk) when she logs into her user account and cannot access files. I tried changing the permissions of the mount on my side but it said I did not have access. What now?

# ¿ Oct 31, 2011 12:31

dexter6: Sep 22, 2003

japtor posted:

Are you sharing the whole disk or did you set up separate user accounts in the AirDisk stuff in AirPort Utility?

The whole disk was shared before when I had it plugged directly into my iMac. I haven't changed any settings in Airport since then. Just plugged it into the Time Capsule.

# ¿ Oct 31, 2011 23:18

dexter6: Sep 22, 2003

Action Jackson! posted:

It sounds like you set this up as a Time Machine backup disk and not just a plain AirPort disk.

http://www.zisman.ca/Articles/2009/LEM-Airdisk/airdisk.html

I'm not sure what exactly the article was for (I didn't see anything that seemed to fit my situation), but I did not do anything special.

Here's exactly what I did:

1. Had USB drive plugged directly into iMac. All Users had read/write access to the drive.
2. Purchased Time Capsule. Worked flawlessly for ~6 months
3. Plugged USB drive into Time Capsule instead of iMac. Set drive it to automount on login for both users (in User Preferences). Did NOT change any settings on Time Capsule.
4. I am able to read/write files on the mounted disk. My wife cannot read or write files on mounted disk. I see a disk drive on my desktop, she sees a blue folder with a red strikethrough icon on her desktop.

Thoughts?

# ¿ Nov 2, 2011 03:39

dexter6: Sep 22, 2003

japtor posted:

Well I wrote this on the last page:

Do you have to give a username/password to connect to the drive or just connect with no credentials?

Otherwise for #3, I have no clue but is it necessary to auto mount for both users? How are you setting it to automount? Just curious since volumes mount at /Volumes/drivename, like it's not a per user thing afaik. What happens if your wife's account logs in first and tries connecting before yours does? Maybe the OS is essentially giving ownership to the first user and the second can't access the same /Volumes/drive it as a result.

I don't have to give a password, but I do recall when I set up the time capsule a while back that I set up a password and I think I saved to the users' keychains.

I did try having my wife log in first and sure enough she gets the disk icon on her desktop and I get a locked folder. So user accounts are definitely the problem here. Any other thoughts?

# ¿ Nov 2, 2011 18:41

dexter6: Sep 22, 2003

I recently upgraded from Outlook 2007 on Windows to Outlook 2011 on OSX and I have (what I think is) a relatively simple question that Google wasn't able to give me an answer on.

I copied over my archive.pst to the Mac and imported it into Outlook. All of my files showed up in Outlook. But, do you know if I can delete the actual PST file? I'm thinking the answer is yes since Outlook imported it and didn't just open it. But I'd hate to delete this 4gb file and lose all of my archive. Anyone know?

# ¿ Nov 21, 2011 00:27

dexter6: Sep 22, 2003

I'm looking for a "To Do" app recommendation that meets the following requirements:

Has an iOS version (cross posted in iOS apps thread)
Syncs between all application instances
Allows me to tag or categorize ToDos
Pushes reminders and/or alerts to all devices
Allows me to snooze reminders and/or alerts

Any suggestions? (As an FYI, I have tried Producteev however I could not get push alerts on any device and the iOS did not sync well enough)

Thanks!

# ¿ Nov 29, 2011 14:43

dexter6: Sep 22, 2003

Pope Corky the IX posted:

Okay, just downloaded something in Xvid format and I'm looking for a safe, free codec for my iMac running Lion 10.7.2

Thanks in advance.

VLC or MPlayerX

# ¿ Dec 31, 2011 17:44

dexter6: Sep 22, 2003

My computer has been running really slow lately and today I got a message that [paraphrase] says I've run out of hard disk space and I no longer have space for paging. So, I've decided to move my 50gb iPhoto library to an external drive, however that process is going very slow. Is it because I have such little space on my hard drive? Would it be better to delete / move some other things first to get up the free hard disk space? How much is the minimum free space I need? Or is my copy going slow for other reasons?

Thanks!

# ¿ Jan 1, 2012 22:59

dexter6: Sep 22, 2003

There are certain directories in my home directory that I want to share with my wife's user account on the same machine. When I share the directory, it allows her to see the contents, but she can't open any of the media. If I apply the changes to all contents, she can open the videos that are in the folder, but not any new videos that I add.

Is there any simple way for me to share these ever changing files and directories with another user account?

I'm running Lion, BTW. Thanks!

# ¿ Jan 7, 2012 22:11

dexter6: Sep 22, 2003

japtor posted:

Maybe something with ACLs or other stuff that's over my head. Have you tried using /Users/Shared? I'm not sure that'll solve the problem of new files being unreadable by her but it's worth a shot, unless you have other users on the computer that you don't want to share with.

/Users/Shared works fine, but I was hoping to retain the standard OS X home directory setup.

# ¿ Jan 7, 2012 23:28

dexter6: Sep 22, 2003

Martytoof posted:

Yes, hold down Option on the keyboard and click on the volume meter in your menu bar.

I was hoping this would solve a problem I've always had with my iMac, but it has not.

Problem: Sometimes I output to a second monitor (TV) and have to plug the sound in, this (as expected), mutes the internal speakers. However, I have to remember to unplug the audio cable from the iMac when I'm done otherwise I have no sound.

Is there a tweak I can do where I can make this change on screen and leave the headphone cable plugged in 24/7?

# ¿ Jan 22, 2012 14:28

dexter6: Sep 22, 2003

Toady posted:

I'm not trying to compete with 1Password or sway anyone from using it. This is just a free implementation of Stanford's PwdHash. I wrote it because I was tired of loading KeyGrinder in a browser window. There's also a Firefox extension that will transparently hash password field inputs for you. From what I understand, 1Password data isn't easily accessible away from a Mac, so that might be seen as an advantage for PwdHash.

http://help.agilebits.com/1Password3/1passwordanywhere.html Is pretty accessible. I use it on public / windows computers all the time. Not trying to flame, just wanted to make sure people had all the info.

# ¿ Jan 23, 2012 21:01

dexter6: Sep 22, 2003

Whats the best remote desktop software to run on my iMac that will allow me to remote into it from off-site, using a MacBook Pro and my MacBook Air. All computers are running Lion. Free would be best.

Thanks!

# ¿ Jan 26, 2012 17:36

dexter6: Sep 22, 2003

Bob Morales posted:

Just enable desktop sharing.

I checked that, but it looks like it only works for computers on the same network. Wouldn't I have to VPN into my house for this to work?

# ¿ Jan 26, 2012 18:29

dexter6: Sep 22, 2003

(This may be better suited for the Hardware Thread, but I figured I'd start here)

I'm running an iMac connected wirelessly to a Time Capsule, and I'm seeing something weird when downloading torrents. It seems to ramp up to full speed, stay there for some length of time, then drop back down to nothing, then rinse and repeat.

I've tried fiddling with my global and per torrent number of connections but even at 10 per torrent and 50 max, I'm not seeing any change.

Anyone have any thoughts?

Only registered members can see post attachments!

# ¿ Feb 4, 2012 15:31

dexter6: Sep 22, 2003

TACD posted:

Isn't this normal behaviour for torrents? Starts off slow, ramps up as you connect to more peers, then slows down as the number of peers holding the last few portions of your file decreases? Or does it slow down long before your torrent is finished?

It's long before anything is done.

# ¿ Feb 4, 2012 18:59

dexter6: Sep 22, 2003

Bob Morales posted:

ISP throttling?

My m0n0wall will do that, but at a different level. It will go up up up then down and back going up up up.

Just did a test here and it says my ISP does not appear to be throttling.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2012 14:27

dexter6: Sep 22, 2003

I've found myself having to force quit Finder several times a day because my 11" MBA slows to a crawl. I've opened up ACtivity Monitor and found Finder sucking up >1gb of RAM. Force quitting gets my speed back to normal, but it will start happening again.

This has only happened since upgrading to 10.7.3. Any ideas what I can do? Google didn't seem to help.

# ¿ Feb 12, 2012 17:15

dexter6: Sep 22, 2003

CaptainCaveman posted:

Forgive me for asking the obvious, but have you installed any hacks/haxies/SIMBL plugins/things like that?

You're forgiven... Nope, none of those things installed. Just the basics: 1Password, Dropbox, etc.

# ¿ Feb 12, 2012 18:45

dexter6: Sep 22, 2003

Just quoting once more to see if anyone has had this problem. Thanks!

dexter6 posted:

I've found myself having to force quit Finder several times a day because my 11" MBA slows to a crawl. I've opened up ACtivity Monitor and found Finder sucking up >1gb of RAM. Force quitting gets my speed back to normal, but it will start happening again.

This has only happened since upgrading to 10.7.3. Any ideas what I can do? Google didn't seem to help.

# ¿ Feb 13, 2012 19:15

dexter6: Sep 22, 2003

suddenlyissoon posted:

From out of freaking nowhere, OSX Mountain Lion!

http://www.loopinsight.com/2012/02/16/first-look-os-x-mountain-lion/

Oh god, I want it yesterday.

# ¿ Feb 16, 2012 14:47

dexter6: Sep 22, 2003

If I am messaging with someone, will my iphone buzz for every incoming message even if I have the messages client open on my computer? Or is it smart enough to only push to the device that I have open?

# ¿ Feb 16, 2012 19:37

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 09:59

dexter6: Sep 22, 2003

Kobayashi posted:

Does Spotlight not learn over time? I probably CMD+SPACE for "terminal" every day, but since I installed Office six months ago, the first result is ALWAYS "HyperTerminal Applet." It happens with a tracking spreadsheet I use too. I could have sworn previous Macs learned from my behavior, but that does not seem to be the case with my current Mac. Is this normal?

can't say if it's normal, but Alfred kicks rear end. You can get it for free from the app store.

# ¿ Feb 26, 2012 00:59

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